Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett
1977

This long unavailable and much lauded student film from director Charles Burnett made critical waves on it's release last year - a release made possible by someone flipping the bill for the pricey music clearances to release it legally. Burnett's picture is an unhurried, or exaggerated, examination of black life in Watts with a few trained actors rubbing shoulders with non-actors, and punctuated by divine photography of local children at play. For all the frank and messy life on hand Burnett also imbues a documentary element of mechanized death with the titular patriarch going through his daily routine at a slaughterhouse. By turns humorous, grave, and socially conscious, "Killer of Sheep" deserves it's rep, but I'll admit to never having seen a professional feature of Burnett's or of having been independently interesting by any of his pictures (besides "To Sleep With Anger" (1990)).